Flannery O'Connor Quotes

When we look at a good deal of serious modern fiction, and particularly Southern fiction, we find this quality about it that is generally described, in a pejorative sense, as grotesque. Of course, I have found that anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the Northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic.... Whenever I'm asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one.

Maybe the example of Southern fiction writing has been so powerful that Southern poets have sort of keyed themselves to that.

I would say that all short stories have mystery naturally built into them.

You go down South, and they're quirky; they have culture, and it's not uniformly true of our country. Our country has gotten a little blanded out, big sections of it. Even if you disagree with the politics, you have to appreciate the cuisine, the music, the literature.

The irony of Christmas is always upon the poor in heart; the mystery of the solstice is always upon the rest of us.

It's always funny to me when people meet me. They really think I'm from the East coast off top. When they get to talkin' to me, they go "Oh no, she's sooooo Southern"

I escaped the [Southern-writer] label because I didn't and don't write about the South.

The sense of tragedy - according to Aristotle - comes, ironically enough, not from the protagonist's weak points but from his good qualities. Do you know what I'm getting at? People are drawn deeper into tragedy not by their defects but by their virtues. ... [But] we accept irony through a device called metaphor. And through that we grow and become deeper human beings.

Oh, where are my manners? Do sit down. Pull up a small child.

As my Lord says, my Lord's leg is not a side of beef. Thank you, my Lord, for instructing me.

I think maybe I was instrumental in taking the stereotype out of the Southern actor is some ways. I would hope my legacy would be as a serious actor who told the truth and did parts based on the quality of part and not necessarily the money.

Southerners have many fine qualities, charm and civility among them, and a sense of the tragic.

I forgive you, but only because you said 'please.'" Smartass, I thought. Then I groaned at the instant chorus of "Please!" mixed with cries for release from Vlad's prisoners. No wonder he got so sick of the word. "I'm only merciful to one person a day," he threw over his shoulder. "As the saying goes, today isn't your day and tomorrow doesn't look good, either.

to be civilized is to be incapable of giving unnecessary offense, it is to have some quality of consideration for all who cross our path.

Ninety percent of SF [science fiction] is crud, but then, ninety percent of everything is crud.

In the South the war is what A.D. is elsewhere; they date from it.

J.J. Abrams and Jonah Nolan and Lisa Joy, who are brilliant people, so I knew it [Westworld] was going to be amazing.

To explain away the mystery of a great painting - if such a feat were possible - would do irreparable harm... If there is no mystery, then there is no poetry, the quality I value above all else in art.

[The satirist] must fully possess, at least in the world of the imagination, the quality the lack of which he is deriding in others.

I think the thing that I lost in myself when I stopped writing fiction and the thing that I rediscovered and started mining again is, for lack of a better word, magic. It's the way you can brush up against the inexplicable and the mystical.

This rudeness is a sauce to his good wit, Which gives men stomach to digest his words With better appetite.

Speech recognition is utterly crap for writing fiction. If you try reading a novel aloud you'll soon figure out why - written prose style is utterly unlike the spoken word.

In the greatest fiction, the writer's moral sense coincides with his dramatic sense, and I see no way for it to do this unless his moral judgement is part of the very act of seeing, and he is free to use it. I have heard it said that belief in Christian dogma is a hindrance to the writer, but I myself have found nothing further from the truth. Actually, it frees the storyteller to observe. It is not a set of rules which fixes what he sees in the world. It affects his writing primarily by guaranteeing his respect for mystery.

I grew up in Southern California, so the whole concept of a local music history is still kinda novel to me.

Hi. I haven't insulted you yet, have I?